pondělí 26. listopadu 2012

As you may know, "Grande Prêmio Petrobras do Brasil 2012" took place in São Paulo yesterday. There were many reasons to expect an attractive race from the spectator's point of view. It was not only a last chance to watch Formula One race this year. The Brazilian track is known for its unwelcoming weather conditions too. And what was most important - we still didn't know the name of the driver's championship's winner. There were two possibilities who will take the crown this time: Fernando Alonso of Ferrari or temporary leader of the charts, Sebastian Vettel from Red Bull Racing team. The latter one also
had a precious chance to join Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio. Till that day, they were the only two drivers who were able to win the F1 championship for three times in a row. The race is over today and, officially, the prestigious company consists of three gentlemen now. But... nothing is that simple as it seems, since FIA aroused serious doubts over the final results by a particular controversial decision made during the race.

22nd February 2015 update: I tried to review the events with two years distance. The case was closed by FIA back in 2012 with an explanation that flags have higher priority over lights, no matter whether they are placed on dashboard or on the side of the track. Since I haven't found anything in F1 rules about a priority of flags over lights, I still consider the overtake maneuver heavily controversial. In case there is a conflict between flags and lights, the drivers do not have equal conditions, which is unfair. The only fair solution is to RELY ON DASH LIGHTS, BECAUSE EVERY DRIVER CAN SEE THE CHANGE OF THE RACE MODE AT HIS SPECIFIC LOCATION ON THE TRACK AT THE SAME TIME! (End of the update.)

Evening, 30th November 2012 update: After two days of many people fighting without relevant evidence, there we finally have a new one! This video shows that the presumed marshall waving green a flag on Vettel's onboard blurry video (sorry, I'm still unable to clearly recognize it) waves the flag ONLY when a car leaves the box zone, which suggests that the flag was not relevant for the drivers on track, but only for those who were leaving the pit-lane. You are getting into trouble, FIA! (End of the update.)

Personally, I can't stand FIA's arrogant approach to F1 fans. I refuse to respect the assessment till we get some evidence. (End of the update.)

Late afternoon, 29th November 2012 update: There is another interesting find. The dashbord lights turned off in the previous (3rd) lap when Vettel passed the marshall's station. Claims that the dashboard lights update only in "light flag section" are untrue. The "obvious" mystery around fake GIF was cleared up too: the video mistakenly compares lap 3 and 4, so the stills are not identical. (End of the update.)

Afternoon, 29th November 2012 update):Race director Charlie Whiting claims that "Vettel responded to the flag and did everything right." In order to minimize doubts, I expect FIA to reveal some credible proof. I haven't seen one yet. There are still more things to explain:

Details about possible Ferrari's official protest are still unavailable too. (End of the update.)

Morning, 29th November 2012 update: After me publishing the article (I haven't found any sign that someone surpassed me at least, which means a lot for my self-confidence :-D), a storm of arguments took place all over the place. I took part in the comments section under the YouTube video linked below, but Google staff deleted it today (because of infringing FIA's copyright or some shit like that...). The matter still remains highly questionable. Some people claim that there was a green flag waved before the overtake took place (focus on the green booth on the left side of the track) and that it has higher priority than what the dashboard lights say. At the moment, knowing all of the counter-arguments, I'm afraid it is not possible for a spectator to find out who is the bad guy and who is the good guy, because there is not enough of convincing evidence available (especially from the other side) and very-highly-detailed knowledge of F1 regulations is required to judge the incident fairly. What is most important - the word was spread enough to reach FIA officials, who will very likely examine the situation on their own in the next days. Let's see what will happen... (End of the update.)

Let's put unpredictable weather conditions, dramatic crashes and rushed strategy changes, which affected the race progress in a heavy way, aside and focus on Vettel's "crime". If you are not familiar with FIA's regulations, this is a quick summary of F1 conventions that are relevant to this case:

Alonso had to beat Vettel in the race. As he finished 2nd and Vettel 6th, he fulfilled the mission. But it was not enough. Alonso would celebrate the triumph only if Vettel would finish 8th at best, which he didn't. But he could.

● All F1 races are supervised by so-called "Track Marshalls". These authorities are stationed at various places of the track and take responsibility for fair-play and safety. One of their instruments is an ability to communicate with each other & individual teams and control the race progress by dividing the track into certain coloured sections during the session. The basic colours for Race Control are yellow, blue and red. The yellow ones indicate danger, such as a stranded car, ahead. Most importantly, overtaking is prohibited in these yellow sections for safety reasons. These changes are communicated with teams and drivers via flags, which are waved by the marshalls, by turning on the lights of LED signs that are spread around the track and... by transmitting a wireless signal right into cockpit of any single car so every driver is acknowledged about the current situation (it's sad that even the former F1 champion Damon Hill, who co-hosted the TV broadcast by Sky Sports, didn't mention that).

● Violating this particular "overtaking prohibited" regulation is usually penalized by driving through pitlane. This leads to a loss of approximately 20 seconds for the guilty driver.

Lewis Hamilton is driving through pit lane in Istanbul

● If you're a driver and use a flag or a sign held by marshalls as a reference, it is unclear whether the given section starts, continues or ends. In bad weather conditions like we saw this year in Brazil, it is very difficult to EVEN RESPOND SOMEHOW to these notices because you hardly see the track in front of your car.
The compulsory"GPS marshalling" diodes near the steering wheel - right in front of driver's nose
- are much more precise on that (when you enter a yellow section, the LED diode lights on, when you're inside, it remains active and when you leave it, it dims) and there is no room for excuses.

● This warning system integration may vary slightly from team to team. Red Bull Racing integrated these light diodes exactly as shown on the picture (some real photos from different angles). Notice those six < > shaped, mirrored diodes on the left and right side of the informational display with "BEST 4 RACE" sign. The pair of yellow lights stands on the top, a blue pair lays a little lower and the red pair is placed at the bottom.

GPS Marshall system integration varies from team to team

● Sometimes, racing incidents are examined after the race is over because some situations require more time to be analyzed. The driver or team can be punished by several ways by FIA officials. The corresponding substitution for drive-through penalty means adding 20 seconds to the final race time.

On picture 3, you can also see where the green section of the track begins... It's much further than where an incident took place, which suggests that Vettel actually overtook his opponent in non-green section.

P.S.: I'm not a fan of Alonso nor Vettel. I prefer Hamilton, McLaren and fair-play. :-)

pondělí 11. června 2012

I've been using Windows since version 3.1 and over time, I've used or at least tried every single final release of this product family till today (I mean consumer versions, although I got in contact with those server ones like NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server too). At the moment, I'm a die-hard Windows XP fan, no matter how ancient the system is. I've used it for 9 years (almost third of my life!) with high level of satisfaction and effectivity thanks to lots of useful third-party utilities (let me name Softarium ActiveKeys, SillySot Iconoid and Darius Baczynski's Autoplay Repair), tweaks and, of course, the qualities of the OS itself, which reached almost rock-solid stability after Service Pack 3 was released in 2008 (although the system performed great since the original release already). But last year, I decided to exchange my dated nForce4 desktop for a convertible notebook/tablet in order to improve the ergonomics of me using a PC.

Windows 8 seemed a perfect OS for me to upgrade. I really wanted to love it. I liked the concept. I enjoyed all of the public demonstrations. But my enthusiasm got strangled when I personally tried Windows 8 Release Preview 32bit (W8 RP) on my own rig: untolerable amount of bugs, inconsistencies and backlogs is still present even in such a progressive level of development. The problem is actually so serious that I had returned to my beloved XP prematurely, otherwise I would probably face a threat spending the rest of my life reporting my complaints. Is Microsoft able to fix all of these issues till the end of 2012, which was set as the current W8 release date? I'm skeptical, although I like positive surprises.

At least for a moment, I'll try to put my fears aside, act constructively and share my thoughts and suggestions, as well as pointing out the for-no-reason removed features, imperfections and bugs that
W8 RP
is (unfortunately) full of. As we all know, Microsoft aims the system to the tablet market, occupied by Apple with iPads at the moment. After the years the tablets became well established, there is no doubt that a device like that suits best for a content consuming. Let's name just few kinds of these user actions: listening to music, watching videos, surfing the web or reading documents. Along with ordinary and mostly just evolutionized desktop features we all already know from past, the article will focus mainly on these "consuming" abilities, which are brand new to the Windows family. Unfortunately, there are no special tools to read (Office, PDF, e-book formats, ...) documents from Microsoft, so there is no place for me to express. To make it clear at the beginning: everytime I use an "app" term, I'm referring to a Metro app. Everytime an "application" term appears, it refers to a desktop application. So, are you listening, Redmond?

Unsatisfying Media Playback Experience

Listening to music on a PC is a great priority for me, so expect no mercy. I haven't been building my large discotheque for years for nothing. This is what applies to music playback in general:

Unsatisfying music experience demonstrated on video

1) There is no way how to edit ID3 tags in music (even WMA!) files in default W8 applications ("Properties" of a file, Windows Media Player-WMP or Music app from Metro). In recent Windows 7, it works at least in "Properties" of a file. And in more that 10 years old XP, you can even attach an AlbumArt via Windows Media Player 10.

Notes below apply to Windows Media Player 12, which MS chose as a default media player in the desktop environment. Alternative Microsoft Zune is not present in the default installation as someone could assume, but you can install it additionally of course.

6) "Switch to Now Playing"/"Switch to Library" button is once positioned at the top right corner and then at the right bottom corner when I go from "Now Playing" to "Library" and back. I criticized this in WMP11 back in 2009 already.

10) When the user turns WMP on, put some tracks (or videos) in the playlist, and turn WMP off and on again, last played tracks are gone from the playlist and he can't follow up the listening where he previously interrupted it in any way.

25) When I put a single track into the playlist and hide playback controls via right mouse click on them, I can't recover them by right clicking on the same place again.

26) When I apply right mouse click on items in the playlist, they get selected, but you are not offered the action (what about change an order of the track or remove it from the list?) + surrounding boxes representing tracks inaesthetically blink.

27) Now-playing track is not highlighted in the playlist so it's hard to find out what track will play when I use skip controls.

29) When there sits only a single track in the playlist, I can replay it via |<, but sides of the AlbumArt lack < symbol. If you already do something wrong, do it with care! :-D

30) Track order in the playlist cannot be changed.

31) When I open playlist in "Now Playing" mode and right click any of the track, something very useless happens.

WMP can be used for music playback as well as video playback. If I omit that there are not many codecs supported in the start, there is nothing serious to complain about. Speaking about dedicated Video app from Metro UI, the situation is different. These are my comments:

Stig can chase Video app the same way as a car

32) Video app is not able to play formats that WMP can play from default. It doesn't make any sense to me.

33) I cannot make a playlist of videos.

34) The < arrows > and classic |< track skip >| symbols that serve for skipping a track in Music app now serve only as a rewind button - what an inconsistency!

35) When I move a cursor over now-playing video in fullscreen, the controls could disappear faster so they do not distract you from viewing.

36) When I leave an app without closing it (it remains in the background), the video pauses, but when I do the same in Music app, the playback continues. Have you thought about a situation when one wants to play a music video in Video app, Microsoft? Pausing it would be very inappropriate...

The situation over DVD-Video playback is not as definite as it seemed when every tech-site wrote that "Microsoft dumped DVD". Even if you do not plan to buy third-party standalone software DVD player, there still exists a chance to play a DVD in Windows 8, but it's nothing to go for. Only Windows Media Center can do so, but it is not part of the original installation. The other problems are that...

40) Windows Media Center looks exactly like Metro app, but it isn't, so it makes you confused.

Not That Much to Complain About iExplorer and Explorer

Windows 8 comes with "brand new" Internet Explorer (IE) - unlike WMP12, which was released for W7 already, IE 10 will premiere here. In case you don't require more than just basic features, there is not that much to complain about. Well, I found something after all:

In Metro user interface, you can use default browser called just "Internet Explorer". It's pretty simple, but it's probably what it is suppose to be. These are my negative impressions:

48) A link got lost from Start menu mysteriously
and I couldn't recover it even when I turned Internet Explorer on and off in Windows features menu. You can't download it in Microsoft Store either. At the end, I had to reinstall the system from ground in order to recover the app.

49) I can't "send a link" ("View on the desktop" option) from desktop IE to Metro. Reversibly, it is possible (from Metro to desktop). Shouldn't the desktop representation of the application be more rich in function and not the other way around?

56) When recently opened apps (left edge of the screen) are displayed, closing button "X" would be useful on every tile. At the current state, two steps are required in order to close the app. "Close all" option would be handy too.

57) When I make a (slightly slower) double click on "Show desktop" button at the right bottom corner, only the first click is accepted.

59) Forcing Metro apps (picture viewer, video player or music apps) to desktop users will make them eat you alive. :-D

60) In most cases, when I switch from an app (Metro) to desktop (Aero), I want the desktop to cover most of the screen or the whole area of the screen, but it always requires more than one step. I would welcome if desktop would cover most of the screen when I drag it from recently opened apps bar. Snapped desktop seems useless to me.

What sense does a snapped desktop have? Close to zero.

In text below, I will talk about Start menu and Metro user interface.

61) Allow "Start" and search results to be snapped to the edge of the screen (which is impossible now) and adapt it to the smaller size the same way other apps are please: users that complain over classic Start menu absence will be satisfied, because you'll see Start and desktop at the same time + when you make a search and select one of the results (mainly desktop application), the specific search (and its results) is still available to change the selection.

62)
Give a user an option to boot to Start or to Desktop or both (see point 61): desktop could be on the right and snapped Start could be on the left (the same way it used to be in the past) as shown here (just a quick sketch; maybe just category names could be shown).

63) Use free screen space in search results for unwrapped categories and make the category names (Apps, Settings, Files, ...) shown horizontally at the top of the screen clickable (as are the boxes under the search field) so you can filter the results more specifically (i.e. Files: All, Documents, Pictures, ...) after the click (what would happen after clicking "Files" can be seen here - the "Back" arrow at the top left position was added).

64) At one time, I cannot move more than one tile - yes, several tiles ca be selected, but when I perform the drag, only one tile moves.

65) Make it easier to copy (create) application links from Start (and taskbar) to desktop please (it is impossible now - user always have to go to C:\Program Files folder and execute the action from here, which sucks).

66) I tried to open menus in "Region" window and search an item by a keyboard twice. In both cases, I typed "germ" on my keyboard in order to find "Germany". Surprisingly, I got two different results. Video's worth million words.

Miscellaneous

69) Since Movie Maker allows a direct upload of a movie to video streaming servers, shouldn't Paint allow the same thing with photo hosting servers?

70)
In every single default application, Ctrl+Scroll is reserved for zooming. The scroll wheel alone is used mostly for regular scrolling so you can pan the document - except Photo Viewer, which use "scrolling wheel only" for zooming too - wouldn't "skip image" suits better?

71) When I capture a screenshot via pressing Print Screen key on my keyboard, the PC do not react for a few seconds.

72) I can't even save a crop of a map from Maps app! The app is incredibly poor in functions!!!

Compatibility Issues

I didn't expect that I will encounter so many compatibility issues. These are some of them:

76) I have adjusted Logitech Setpoint's "Keystroke assignments"
feature in order to switch applications (Alt+Tab in default on keyboard) via pressing two premium buttons on my mouse. I can't live without that today. It worked well in XP. This specific settings are ignored in W8 and I can't perform the "trick" anymore. (Note: There was a finding recently that there was something wrong with my mouse, but I already uninstalled W8, so I can't try it again and confirm this.)

77) Jing does not start at all after
absolving regular
installation process, only error message "This application is expired." is shown. I tried to manually install NET Framework 3.5 SP1 from here, but the installation didn't start; I guess 4.0 version cumulates those old ones and is sufficient enough to run the program. The application works fine in W7.

Wrap Up

I've been intensively testing W8 RP for more than a week. I could go on, but, frankly, I got tired of finding a problem on almost every step. Simply said, there are lots of things to improve from my perspective. The current development stage would be acceptable if the release date was more distant and W8 Build 8400, that is presented as a Release Preview, was called beta instead. My biggest concern is that most of the Metro apps suck. It feels unfinished and poor in functions. I would expect Microsoft to showcase the new advances of the Metro platform on it, but they rather drives you away from the new UI, which undoubtedly has a special magic in it. Let's hope in a happy-end, because there is a lot to love too: ribbon UI integration across the system ease file management, lots of under-the-hood improvements result in faster response, advanced Task Manager gives you more control over your system, revolutionary picture password feature degrade additional-charge fingerprint readers, fast boot saves time and more.